Trade All My Tomorrows
by HopefulVoice
Summary: He's here with her, just she and Dexter against the world, and she's so tired. It feels stupid to blame it on exhaustion, but it's just as stupid to blame it on alcohol, or their fucked up lack of childhood or any of the long list she's created every time she tries to pawn off the responsibility. AU in which Dexter and Deb were involved pre-series.


There's a lot of reasons it happens.

She justifies even though there's always reasons, even for these things that no one talks about. The things everyone pretends aren't really happening as the evidence piles up and piles up and piles up and yet, somehow become more invisible the harder all of it becomes to ignore.

She wants to say it's mostly because she loves him, in spite of everything, in a way she's never going to love anyone else, but it's really because he's here. Because it seems like he's the only person who is never going to leave.

She's feels like a failure and he's got so much potential, but he's here with her, just she and Dexter against the world, and she's _so tired_. It feels stupid to blame it on exhaustion, but it's just as stupid to blame it on alcohol, or their fucked up lack of childhood or any of the long list she's created every time she tries to pawn off the responsibility.

Debra has had a long night at work tonight, she feels like she's never going to get out of Vice and make fucking Homicide and when Dexter comes home he's going to tell her not to worry about anything, that she's smart and it's only a matter of time before everyone sees it, and she's going to kiss him with her whiskey numb mouth because tonight's just another night where everything is going to be the same.

* * *

She doesn't know until later that his first everything was with her. That she taught him about how a woman likes to be kissed and held and fucked the same way he taught her to tie her shoes and write her name and read. She doesn't like to think about it because it makes her feel sick, because she should have known. But he was so eager and she was so sadly willing and she knows she said then it was just the once, that first time. It wouldn't happen again because it was wrong and they were better than this, they weren't some white trash stereotype. But apparently they are. Because it wasn't just the once. And she doesn't even feel all that bad about that any more.

He'd been spying on her and Denise Carpuccio from the stairs, listening to them talk about how none of the high school boys know what they're doing, as they smoke the joints Denise's brother rolled for them. And she doesn't know why he was on the stairs, or why he suddenly made his presence known to say, "Well, how do girls expect you to kiss them?", in a way that sounded more inquisitive than offended, but she's still the most confused as to why she made him come down to where they were on the couch, grabbed him by the back of the neck, and pulled him in until his mouth was against hers.

"That. That is how a girl wants to be kissed," she declares when she's finished and Denise has never laughed so loudly in front of her before, but all Debra can do is look at Dexter's shell shocked face. He walks upstairs and slams his bedroom door, and Debra takes another hit and tries to pretend she understands anything that's going on.

* * *

The first time she actually hears Dexter tell someone to, "Fuck off", it's a guy who was calling her a slut while they walked home from school. Debra didn't really care, it was just Zach Lipnicki and no one is ever going to suck that guy's dick, no matter how big of a slut they might actually be, but Dexter ended up with a black eye and a scraped up chin over it anyway.

At home, while she's making him press a bag of frozen peas to his eye socket, she tells him he's not supposed to fight battles like this for her. He informs her that he's his own person and will fight whatever battles he feels are worth fighting.

Nine times out of ten, Debra can't help but realize she is involved.

* * *

Dexter has never liked any of the guys she brings home. They're always something that pushes him over the edge. Either they're dirtbags or they're boring or they smoke too much or they aren't smart enough or he knows, he just knows they're going to treat her like shit.

Some of the guys try to talk to him and win him over, like she's going to think it's sweet, or they ignore him, but regardless, it usually just ends yelling, or on occasion, fists being thrown.

The guys call him a maniac or a motherfucker or a cockblocking piece of shit, and they're probably right, but Debra likes that someone stands up for her. Not like Harry's going to give two fucks.

* * *

Debra doesn't realize why she's been uneasy for days, until Harry tells her he's going out for a very special anniversary. Because, somehow, it's been five years since their mother died.

And Debra thinks about all the things she's achieved in that time and all the things she's missed out on, and this is her whole life, every day, this comparison, and just for a second it gets a little hard to breathe. She and Dex have done it, held them all together and kept them alive and mostly safe, and it's weird to try and figure out when it stopped seeming like a chore and just became the way things are.

She goes to the bathroom and looks at her face in the mirror. Tries to figure out if she looks older or more mature or like her mom, and wants to see it there, strangely, some record that her life has been touched by this. That she's not the girl she was before everything changed.

Dexter's the one who catches her, of course, and asks, nonchalantly, "You looked at a calendar, didn't you?"

She turns to him, and somehow, it's looking at him that makes her realize she could have run away from all of this, could have run away from Harry's drunken grief, from the constant worry about money. She could have gotten out. "Do I look different?"

"I don't know. But, you look like someone who can handle anything." And she remembers why she didn't do any of those things. Why she stayed. Why she's always going to stay.

"Kiss me," she demands, and it's daylight and they're not alone, Harry could walk in just like Dexter did, but she feels empowered with his words, and she needs to be loved, even if it's in this fucked up, terrible kind of way.

And he does. Hard. He always kisses her hard.

Except for those times he kisses her softly. When they got home after she got the stitches in the ER. Her birthday. The night the sky was lit up in illegal fireworks following a win by the Miami Heat.

Dexter breathes heavily against her, clutches at her breast and her hip and all the clothes in the way, telling her he's so happy she stayed, always is there, and she feels for the first time today like a failure, like she wants so much more than this for him.

* * *

Debra realizes, when some guy attempting to flirt with her comments on her necklace, that it's the ones Dexter gave her the day she graduated the academy. And it's like a sign she didn't know she was looking for. She has to make it work with this guy, or the next - or someone who doesn't already share her parents and her life and her memories.

Because he's got to do the same thing.

She debates talking to him about it, explaining why this is what she has to try, but they didn't talk to start this, it feels too out of place to talk about it ending.

The times her boyfriends disappoint her, though, she can't help but think how Dexter would never do that. Even if she shouldn't.


End file.
